I wouldn’t have associated
the Kern organ in the Dresden Frauenkirche with the music
of the French romantics had it not been for the fact
that Samuel Kummer’s initial recital on that organ, part
of the ‘First Three Days’ Festival after the re-consecration,
consisted of the music of Bach, Brahms, Reger and Kummer
himself (all predictable) and Vierne (less predictable.)

And he has already achieved
the feat of successfully performing French music on this
instrument on an earlier Carus recording of Bach and
Dupré (83.188). As Dominy Clements writes in his review of
that CD:

It is as if
the Kern organ has somehow completely transformed itself,
proving its sound spectrum to be easily the equal of
many a romantic French instrument.

A section of the booklet
of this new Carus SACD is devoted to a description of
the organ of the Frauenkirche, severely damaged by Allied
bombing towards the end of World War II and restored
by Daniel Kern. Perhaps ‘restored’ is not really the
correct word, since, although the notes refer to the
process as a rebuild, with the opportunity taken to add
further stops to the original Silbermann design of 1736,
the restored instrument of 2005 is much more versatile
than its predecessor, with the potential to sound like
the Cavaillé-Coll organs which Vierne and other late-romantic
French composers had in mind. Significantly Kern, like
Silbermann before him, has connections with Strasbourg,
that crossing-point of French and German culture.

Page 23 of the booklet
gives a full specification of the organ, including the Récit
expressif, which is the chief reason for its suitability
for the music of Vierne, ranging from two 16’ stops, Bourdon and Basson to
the 1’ Piccolo stop. The only other information
which I would have liked would have been the registration
for each movement.

The Dutch independent
company DE Versluis has already recorded all the Vierne
symphonies with three different organists – Bert de Hertog
in No.3 and Kees Gelug in No.5 – a recording which Dominy
Clements praised for its enterprise, but which he found
a little disappointing (3 CDs, DEV-VI1010 – see review).

DC compared the Versluis
recording with the ‘benchmark’ recordings of Ben van
Oosten on MDG, especially with regard to the larghetto fourth
movement of No.5. Here he remarked on van Oosten’s ability
not to sound sluggish despite an overall timing of 12
minutes against Gelug’s 10:57. I was, therefore, surprised
to find that Kummer on the new Carus recording takes
only 8:52 for this movement (track 9) without seeming
in any way too fast. (No, that’s not a misprint, either
here or in the booklet – my CD deck confirms the timing.)
This one movement seems to account for most of the difference
between Kummer’s 38:05 and Geluk’s 41:25 overall.

If Kummer is around 3
minutes faster than Geluk in No.5, the same is true of
his account of No.3 by comparison with de Hertog, though,
once again, I thought his tempi absolutely right in this
symphony. Comparing his timings with those of Bruno Mathieu
on a widely recommended Naxos recording (8.553524, coupled
with No.6), Kummer on paper appears even more extreme,
especially on tracks 4, Adagio and 5, Final,
yet here, too, his tempo makes complete sense within
the terms of his overall performance. The Adagio movement
has plenty of forward momentum without sounding in any
way hurried – indeed, if I were looking for adjectives
to describe it, ‘sensitive’ and ‘reflective’ would come
to mind, and these are surely suitable qualities for
this music. If he lets rip in the Final a little
more than his rivals, that, too, is surely within the
spirit of the music. As always, timings are only part
of the picture.

Sometimes tempi do matter
a great deal, though: I’d forgotten how universally a
slow tempo for the opening movement of the Brahms Violin
Concerto had established itself until I recently rediscovered
the Heifetz /Reiner version – you can get it in sound
much improved on that of the LP on which I first heard
it, along with other gems of the past, for a mere £1.99
from the classicsoline archive.

Perhaps changes made by
the new Carus edition, employed for this recording (see
below) are partly responsible. I’m sure that it would
be prohibitively expensive for Carus to provide these
new scores for reviewers but, without them, one can’t
be sure.

The notes remind us that
Vierne’s original manuscripts are often hard to decipher,
owing to his congenitally defective eyesight – an assertion
borne out by the rather spidery illustration on page
5 and the equally shaky signature Louis Vierne organiste
de Notre-Dame de Paris on the cover– and they draw
attention to the new Laukvik and Sanger editions, just
published by Carus themselves (18.153 and 18.155). Since
this is the first recording to employ these corrected
editions, in a sense it replaces all previous versions.
With playing at all times sensitive to the mood of the
music, it can stand as the new benchmark for these works.

DC found the Versluis
recording unhelpful. Carus’s recording on the new SACD
is both clear and full – the sound of a large-scale organ
from its softest to its loudest perfectly conveyed, even
in ordinary stereo. There’s plenty of air around the
instrument without the reverberation being in any way
excessive.

The notes in the attractive
booklet are helpful and informative, even in the slightly
abridged and slightly stilted, but perfectly comprehensible
English translation.

The heading Viernes
Orgelwerke on the front cover seems to indicate
that Carus intend to complete the series. We already
have the complete MDG series (4 CDs, 316 0732 2) and
Pierre Cochereau’s classic set on the Notre Dame organ
is available from Solstice (3 CDs, SOCD911-3). There
is a rival series underway on the Festivo label, on
a Cavaillé-Coll organ, too – see Chris Bragg’s generally
positive review of
Volume 3. If Naxos complete the Mathieu Bruno cycle,
there will be yet another, but we can’t have too much
of a good thing.

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